Bootstrapping time dilation decoherence

DOI10.1007/S10701-015-9939-9MaRDI QIDQ892923zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Cisco Gooding, W. G. Unruh

Publication date 12 November 2015

Published in Foundations of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05488

zbMATH Keywords

general relativityintrinsic decoherencetime dilation

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

General questions in astronomy and astrophysics (85A04) Special relativity (83A05) Einstein's equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems) (83C05) Open systems, reduced dynamics, master equations, decoherence (81S22)

Abstract: We present a general relativistic model of a spherical shell of matter with a perfect fluid on its surface coupled to an internal oscillator, which generalizes a model recently introduced by the authors to construct a self-gravitating interferometer [1]. The internal oscillator evolution is defined with respect to the local proper time of the shell, allowing the oscillator to serve as a local clock that ticks differently depending on the shell's position and momentum. A Hamiltonian reduction is performed on the system, and an approximate quantum description is given to the reduced phase space. If we focus only on the external dynamics, we must trace out the clock degree of freedom, and this results in a form of intrinsic decoherence that shares some features with a proposed "universal" decoherence mechanism attributed to gravitational time dilation [2]. We note that the proposed decoherence remains present in the (gravity-free) limit of flat spacetime, emphasizing that the effect can be attributed entirely to proper time differences, and thus is not necessarily related to gravity. Whereas the effect described in [2] vanishes in the absence of an external gravitational field, our approach bootstraps the gravitational contribution to the time dilation decoherence by including self-interaction, yielding a fundamentally gravitational intrinsic decoherence effect.

Recommendations

• Fundamental decoherence from quantum gravity: a pedagogical review
• A master equation for gravitational decoherence: probing the textures of spacetime
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Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5298409 (Why is no real title available?)
• Canonical Variables for General Relativity
• General relativistic effects in quantum interference of photons
• On gravity's role in quantum state reduction
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Cited in

(7)

• Fundamental decoherence from quantum gravity: a pedagogical review
• Decoherence of a composite particle induced by a weak quantized gravitational field
• Transition to light-like trajectories in thin shell dynamics
• Time dilation in quantum systems and decoherence
• Equivalence principle for quantum systems: dephasing and phase shift of free-falling particles
• A gravitationally induced decoherence model using Ashtekar variables
• Quantum tunneling of composite object coupled with quantized radiation field

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